Re: Today's Contrived Scenario (with a tip o the hat to Mr. Kuo) Re: Do My Homework

James Nicoll wrote:

The Earth is balkanized but still where most humans and most
wealth is found.

Hmm...that either means the world is more or less the same
as always, or it means that at one time Earth was unified
but then it got splintered apart later on.

The solar system has been settled long enough for distinctive
local cultures to emerge but in general, only the less profitable
communities are not closely tied to a terrestrial ally (The arrow
of causality works both ways on this: Sometimes they are left alone
because they have nothing to offer and sometimes isolation makes them
poor. Note the total absense of ISOLATE YOUR WAY TO WEALTH THE HERMIT
KINGDOM WAY books in your local bookstore).

I don't know if I buy this. It smacks of a throw-back to
the good old days of mercantilism or colonialism. I think
globalism may be too ingrained into our economic culture
to go away.

OTOH, maybe this is a consequence of the "balkanization"
of Earth. For example, it could be that China becomes
the dominant superpower thanks to strict mercantile
strategy defeating aimless free trade globalism.
When Earth later balkanizes, the remaining factions know
that free trade policies ultimately results in being
swallowed up by more disciplined economic powers.

Given the experience of the 20th century, we like to
think of largely unregulated global free trade to be
the ultimate model for success (well, success for the
developed world at the expense of the exploited third
world--but who cares about those losers). However,
the successful global powers in the previous century
could just as reasonably have assumed that colonialism
was the ultimate model for success. I'm not going to
presume that the next century doesn't have some
shocking surprises in store for us.

One exception is near Jupiter, where RECENT UNPLEASANTNESS
inadvertently led to a bunch of independent societies in what is, it
turns out, one of the transportation choke points of the solar system.
Unfortunately, while any one great power on Earth could stomp the
Jovian ramble, none of the great powers want to see their rivals
with such a plum. Better to deal with bandits than Those People.

ONGOING UNPLEASANTNESS has distracted the Great Powers of
Earth, as they explore why it is mass warfare between equals is a
bad idea (It was a bad idea last time too but this time the guys
in charge were all born after the last vets of that died). One of
the Jovian groups, which we will call the -- Say, it's hard to come
up with a term not already used by some previous annoying nation. Hmmm,
republic, confederacy, Imperial... Ah, I have it -- the Dominion
of Jupiter has been consolidating all of the little groups into one
big one, which the Great Powers on Earth would really prefer they not
do but the reaction threshold has not yet been hit.

How about the "Jovian Plutocracy"?

The problem the Dominion has is that while power plants
on Metis make cheap rockets easy, this requires the laser-thermal
rockets to stay on a predictable course, not always an asset for
military craft.

Metis? I don't think Metis is so suitable for power plants.
It's not inside a significant plasma torus, and the relative
velocity with the (very sparse) plasma is much lower than
that around Io.

The plasma rotates along with the planet at around once
per 10 hours (1/35700 rotations per second). Metis is
faster than that with a period of 7 hours (1/25500
rotations per second). That means a relative velocity
of 9km/s.

Io's orbit has a period of 42.5 hours (1/153000 rotations
per second). That means a relative velocity of 57km/s.

As you get further away from Jupiter, the relative
velocity between the plasma field and an orbit gets
higher and higher. However, my gut feeling is that
the density of the plasma torus around Io makes it
the ideal location. I'm not sure how to calculate
how much tether power you can get, though, so I can't
back that up.

Their solution involves anti-protons and U238,
but alas, the uranium mines around Jupiter run from meager to
poor. They can import it but the nations of Earth have decided to
cut them off, on the grounds that this only hurts the Dominion
military. The civilian economy can run forever on the Metis
power system. In contrast, the Dominion fleet may well run
out of juice in a few months.

For decent ore, you need for there to have been abundant
water - but no so much the ore beds are at the bottom of an ocean
hundreds of kilometers deep - and active geology. There are two
worlds aside from Earth where that is true and those are Ceres
(a bit cold and too water rich but what the hell) and Mars.

Cunning Plan A: two fleets, disguised as commercial fleets,
are sent to Ceres and Deimos such that they arrive at the same time.
The Dominion is actually not much of a long range power (because they
don't have to be) and this actually ties up a good chunk of their
fleet. Since the Great Powers operate under the idea that their
enemies are not hubristic morons who cannot do the sums on relative
GDPs, it has never occured to them that the Dominion might do this.

Mars is an important enough plum that Great Power A might
try to monopolize it, so GP B and C do have fleets there as well. The
Dominion's attack does great damage to the Martian Fleets but fails.
The Dominion assets are either destroyed or surrender.

Ceres is more of a backwater, except for the fact that it
produces power metals, and is entirely owned by GP A. The attack
there succeeds and now the Dominion is occupying Ceres and at war
with Great Power A. Since B and C suffered a great injury but won,
and are distracted by ONGOING UNPLEASANTNESS, they do not declare
war on the Dominion.

It seems a little implausible to me for both Ceres and
Mars to be attacked. Ceres makes for a juicy target,
but Mars seems to be an unwinnable target--kind of like
Russia in the winter. No maniacal dictator would be
stupid enough to try and invade Russia, right? Okay,
okay, no other maniacal dictator would be stupid enough
to try and...okay, okay, okay.

All of Ceres' output of fissionables is redirected to Jupier.

Now the interesting thing is that GP A's fleet is designed for
interplanetary work, not quick trips amongst Jovian moons. Most of the
fleet is high delta vee, low acceleration. They have a big fleet and
a lot of experience with it (In fact, thanks to RECENT UNPLEASANTNESS,
they have outposts all the way out to the Kuiper). They do have some
high acceleration, low delta vee stuff carried parasitically on the
long range fleet but this is not their forte.

I suppose GP A's colonies are mostly strung out in the
far flung regions of the solar system, as opposed to
GP B and GP C which dominate the continent--er, I mean
the inner solar system. In the inner solar system,
there would be plenty of use for low delta-v stuff.

The Dominion, on the other hand, has a large fleet of high
acceleration, low delta vee ships. They rule within the Jovian system
but can't get anywhere outside it quickly. Most of their surviving
long range assets are tied up at Ceres. A rational assessment of
relative power suggests that as soon as Great Power A either re-assigns
one of the Outer Fleets (which will take some time) or builts more
ships (Also a time eater), the Dominion will get spanked at Ceres.
The Dominion theory is that they are worth ten times their number
of feeble, decadent Terrans and anyway, the Terrans are all talk
and no do.

Does it make sense for GP A to attack Ceres? It ties up
Jovian resources and only benefits the Jovians if they
can ship stuff back to the Jupiter system. Sooner or
later, the Jovians are going to have to try and ship
something back home. Either they pull up tents entirely
and leave Ceres undefended, or they send unprotected
cargo shipments, or they split up their forces.

Regardless of the Jovian decision, it seems to me that
GP A would do best by heading straight for the viscinity
of Jupiter. Here, they can blockade any attempted
shipments and meet any returning military forces
after they've expended propellant for the return journey.

About this time ONGOING UNPLEASANTNESS ends inconclusively,
setting the foundation for ONGOING UNPLEASANTNESS: THE SEQUEL, in
which REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT B repeats all the mistakes of its
predecessor, only worse.

Once the front gets back to Jupiter, Great Power A is
going to run into the problem that the Dominion's main forces are
optimized for that environment and GPA's is not. On the other
hand, some of the outer moons of Jupiter might as well be in deep
space...

Interesting situation, boring, just too silly for words?
Do I need more proper nouns?

Interesting, although I would have done it the other
way around--with the maniacal warmongering dictator
on Earth or Mars, and the center of economic wealth
in the Jupiter system.

Isaac Kuo

.

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